p.34 #1 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Tariq Gibran wrote:
With a full ground glass screen, the light hitting it is diffused and scattered evenly. The effect is that dof and oof areas are accurate. With fresnels, microprisms, bright screens and the like, the focusing screen and or parts of the focusing screen act more like a lens or mini-prisms (the light is scattered/ diffused less and focused more directly into the pentaprism).
this is only true where the light hits microprisms. the rest of the focus screen (which is ground glass!) receives all the light that it would without the microprisms and split prism (note that the light from the lens is focused onto the matte portion of the screen exactly as will be on to the film/sensor plane).
i definitely do prefer pure matte screens though, i don't like having that blind spot in the center. it's kinda the reverse of rangefinder.
p.34 #5 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
sxgva wrote
I hope Adobe won't put the support to the Cloud version only.
I'm pretty sure they've already indicated they'll still provide camera support updates for perpetual licensee's of CS6 (can't recall @ earlier versions though).
p.34 #7 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Very soon will commence a new round of lens comparo fun.
Because so few lenses have been subjected to the 'big daddy' Nikon D800's sensor - one reason for the development of the Otus - we can finally get some idea of the respective IQ on offer from almost all lenses with the a7r.
OK, there are the higher density APS-C sensors, but what about FF corners - the extra 50% of the bigger sensor that spreads out in all directions? Which lenses will weaken, stand or fall? Which reputations will be tarnished, which enhanced?
Wide apertures, how will the much loved f1.4 lenses go under this new and higher level of scrutiny? We should also be able to gauge how much progress Zeiss has made with the FE lenses as measured against the known qualities of the established elite.
I read today that the a7r is next up over at DxO - good.
I hope you are right Kent, the a7r is hopefully the last Sony many will want/need for a while..
Whoa... according to Sony, if these are the specs are the same for both cameras, and differences are noted by the model an parentheses... both cameras have Gapless On-Chip Lens Design!
Here are the official specifications for both cameras:
36.4MP Full Frame Exmor CMOS Sensor (α7r), 24MP (α7)
No Optical Low-Pass Filter (α7r)
ISO 100-25600 (with 50 ISO extension)
1200-zone evaluative metering
4fps (α7r), 5fps (α7)
1/8000 to 30s shutter
Full 1080/60p Video with Remote Capture
2.4M-Dot OLED Electronic Viewfinder
25 points contrast AF
117 points phase-detection AF (α7)
3.0" Tiltable TFT LCD with 1,229K-Dots
TRILUMINOS™ Color technology
BIONZ X image processing engine
Gapless On-Chip Lens Design
Direct Compatibility with E-mount Lenses
Weather sealed
Built-In Wi-Fi and NFC
Dimensions (WxHxD): 5.0 x 3.7 x 1.9"
Weight 407g (main unit only)
p.34 #9 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Fred Miranda wrote:
Now that we have the official brochure, we can confirm that the Gapless On-Chip Lens Design is for the α7R only.
You would think that Sony created the 'optimal positioning' of each on-chip lens to account for the sharper angle of light resulting from the shorter distance of lens to sensor as a way to accommodate some of the issues with the NEX-7 (color shift and smeared corners) with rangefinder lenses. The fact that the a7 does not have this feature hopefully gives us hope that the a7R UWA RF lenses will make us all happy!
p.34 #10 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Fred Miranda wrote:
Now that we have the official brochure, we can confirm that the Gapless On-Chip Lens Design is for the α7R only.
Also:
Electronic Front Curtain Shutter (α7 only)
Flash Sync Speed: 1/160 (α7R) and 1/250 (α7)
Weight (main unit only): 407g (α7R), 416g (α7)
Weird how it shows up in the main specs for both though...
p.34 #11 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
It always made sense as a point of differentiation, the sensor mods of the a7r. Good, and we may know as soon as 1-2 days how the legacy M lenses fare with it. There may still be jpeg processing in-camera as well. More great images are surfacing across the web.
Another thought is lens selection for the release: a fine 35mm and a brilliant 55mm.
I mention this because for all the years of the ZA (A mount) DSLRs Sony never introduced these two most important focal lengths in high end prime lenses, until only recently they released a heavy and expensive 50mm f1.4, much too late. The original ZA lenses were two heavy zooms and fast 85mm and 135mm primes. A 24mm came much later by which time users doubted the company's intentions and still do, re A mount.
This seems to signal a more serious and deeper analysis of the market and its preferences. They are making a lot of good decisions of late: RX and a7 in particular.
p.34 #12 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Taylor Sherman wrote:
Also - an 80MP sensor won't affect video moire at all if they still produce 1080p video by simply throwing away 7 out of 8 lines or whatever.
You need a processor that's capable of correctly downsampling (meaning first applying a stronger AA filter, then throwing away samples and lines) every single frame in real-time.
Like Sony claims to do with the new RX10.
I'm seeing better video samples popping up today, but the real juice with the A7 (and RX10) from a videography standpoint is the clean 4:2:2 10bit 1080 hdmi out spec. Sony could have (as always) done a lot more on the internal recording codecs, they have the horses and there is no physical reason to prevent them form incorporating something like the XAVC codec into one of the A7s. . .except the additional $14,000 and change they would like you to spend on an F5.
p.34 #17 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Fred Miranda wrote:
Now that we have the official brochure, we can confirm that the Gapless On-Chip Lens Design is for the α7R only.
And it's also definitely not an D800E sensor either, its newly designed specifically for the A7R, and I think the noise performance maybe a touch better than the D800 series. They are some pretty astonishing details at 100% crop on some examples floating around the web. Personally even though the extra resolution is nice, the extra dynamic range, noise performance and tilt up live view for wide angle composition is going to be wonderful over the M9. Leica would be silly not to leave CMOSIS in their next range finder and go with a Sony sensor in the M360.
p.34 #18 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
efgm wrote:
And it's also definitely not an D800E sensor either, its newly designed specifically for the A7R, and I think the noise performance maybe a touch better than the D800 series. They are some pretty astonishing details at 100% crop on some examples floating around the web. Personally even though the extra resolution is nice, the extra dynamic range, noise performance and tilt up live view for wide angle composition is going to be wonderful over the M9. Leica would be silly not to leave CMOSIS in their next range finder and go with a Sony sensor in the M360.
There is no evidence presented so far that the A7R processor is anything but a D800 sensor with customized microlenses and no AA filter. You are really speculating about better noise performance than D800/D800E.
p.34 #19 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
... I read somewhere that the new A7r Sony sensor has gap-less micro prisms. This is not good news just for wide angle lenses but also for collecting more light. I am not sure the D800 has that gap-less technology that provides a larger surface area to collect photons and focus them on the photo cells. Of course the sensor is only part of the electronic pipeline... Nikon has been very good in this area so I will be very surprised (but delighted) if Sony can do better.
p.34 #20 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
raul jarquin wrote:
This is not good news just for wide angle lenses but also for collecting more light.
Coupled with the offset sensor, the amount of refraction required to redirect the light to the sensor will be less. Less refraction means better transmission (vector forces) of light energy onto the sensor. Given that noise is often associated with low light reaching the sensor ... any little gain in energy transfer is likely to be a good thing (on paper at least).
How much diff will it make ... yet to be seen.
HopeIsEternal wrote:
There is no evidence presented so far that the A7R processor is anything but a D800 sensor with customized microlenses and no AA filter. You are really speculating about better noise performance than D800/D800E.
But, with a "gapless", "offset" & "no AA" sensor design ... I'd not be inclined to quickly call that the same as the D800. I believe I read somewhere that the noise was indeed improved (sorry, can't recall the source).
